Good, horrible, better (squared), not so good, Great!

That was my weekend.  Here was the plan: wife’s surgery Friday, mother in law there to help Friday and Saturday.  Spend the weekend making soup, fetching water, dispensing pills, and in between all that playing a massive amount of Warcraft.  Took Monday off work in anticipation of her and my return to work Tuesday.

Friday: Good
My wife had her surgery, everything went well.  Picked her up from the hospital and took her home. 

Saturday: Horrible
I was happily playing along when my PC screens went black.  Hmm…the caps lock key still works, so it mist be video related.  Cranked the sound and heard the stuttering sound of the locked game.  Ctrl-Alt-Del.  No response. Hold it for 20 seconds, no reset…hmmm.  Power down.  Power up and it locks at the screen that gives me the option of going into the Bios setting.  No response on keyboard.  Hmm..  Unplug 1 month old external DVD burner, remove video card, second screen, and TV tuner card…no response.  Change keyboard and mouse on an off chance, no response.  Remove 2 of 4 ram chips, nada, remove the other two and try first two alone…nothing. Unplug internal DVD, and hard drive and try to boot..nothing.

CRAPTASTIC.  My baby is dead.  After a year of flawless performance it just dies out of the blue.  I take it to my “guy” (the one person more geek than me).  He pokes and prods and says it is the motherboard or processor. 

Sunday: Better.
The wife is getting to where she can stand up sometimes.  Now, I only have to physically lift her to standing and hold her while she catches her balance, I no longer have to half carry her to the bathroom.  I am focused on getting my baby working.  My mom comes to visit.  I pilfer her laptop for some shopping.  No good deals.  I will cost as much to repair as to replace.  I left my wife in the good care of my mom and run to Best Buy.  Granted, I despise buying a Best Buy computer, but I cave and get a new Gateway.  My old one was a Gateway and I loved it.  I found one with a PCI-E slot and room to grow.  I am not pleased about having to switch to Vista against my will, but I bite the bullet and swipe my bank card.  I spent a few hours playing in Vista trying to find out how to do anything. 

Monday: Better
I spent the 8 hours installing Office, Winamp, my mouse drivers, and an INSANE amount of time getting WOW re-installed.  (FYI when installing in Vista, be prepared to click OK 5937 times per hour).  Then I went to install my video card.  It requires a power plug.  There is one available.  When the card is placed in the system the power plug is about 1.5” from the end of the power cord coming off the video card.  CRAPTACULAR.  I need to drive 15 minutes to Best Buy to spend $2 on a power splitter / extender.  Unfortunately my mom is gone and I don’t want to leave my wife alone…seeing as she can’t get off the couch she is so drugged.  No video for me.

Tuesday: Great!
The wife was not up to going back to work, so I stayed home. I figure if I spend the day tending to her she will get better faster…that and I have Vista to explore.  I got bored with Vista by about 9am.  I started to dig thru my tote of games looking for what I was going to re-install on the new toy.  Lo and behold, glory of glories, there in the bottom of the tote, gasp, the clouds part, an single sunbeam shines down on it, a chorus of angels sings: It is a power cable I can use!!!  I power up my video card and get it running.  Now I am back with my Dual Screen goodness. 

I bought the game “Medal Of Honor: Airborn” a while ago.  I had more than enough computer to run it, but it would not run.  After a total of 9 hours with their Tech Support the 4th person I talked to actually said “Well, it should work.  I guess you just can not play it”.  I tried to return it, but it was open.  So I was stuck with it and no way to play it.  Now, it works.  I am pretty sure it was the fact that I had Alcohol 120 on there, because the guy at EA said that some “image burners” cause errors with the security system. 

I will write up a review on that game, because it is BADASS.  If you like shooters get this game.

So, the wife is back to work today, and doing well.  I am the proud new owner of a shiny new Gateway. 

Before anyone asks, it is an AMD Athalon 64 X2 Dual Core 6000+, 3 gig of DDR2 RAM, 500gig HD, and 5.1 sound.  I know that it is not the most powerful, but with my Video card (Raedon 1950 pro with 512 meg of RAM) it moves along nicely.